Rather Die Young
by CowboySteel
Summary: When Lily is killed, James falls apart. This is the story of the year he lived without love. [Obvious character death! AU]


_A/N: So this is sad. And really angsty. And there's no dialogue. But yeah, I hope it's in character regardless. I imagine James to be blindsided by Lily's death tbh. And not care too much about crying because yanno...it's Lily. Anyway. Enjoy. Leave a snazzy review if you want :)_

* * *

**Rather Die Young**

_I'd rather die young than live my life without you - Beyoncé (Rather Die Young)_

* * *

He had only left to fetch chips.

James and Sirius had left Lily in the warmth, trudging out into the drizzly autumn mulch to fetch chips for their tea. They had shared a few glasses of wine and none of them much felt like cooking.

Chips paid for, acquired and tucked under his arm, James Potter turned the corner onto his road, laughing at a joke Sirius was telling him before something made his laughter stop indefinitely. He halted abruptly at the sight before him. People were milling around outside his house; people were crying. The street was bathed in a sickly green light and a shadow loomed in the sky above. James dropped the chips.

He started walking fast, faster, running toward his house and Sirius followed, calling out his name. James didn't look back. He burst forwards through the crowd, shouting Lily, begging her to come to him, to his arms. Sirius tried to stop him, to catch his arm but James resisted. He had to find his wife, he had to see her.

He pulled free from Sirius when he spotted Alastor Moody emerging from his open doorway. Sirius had no choice but to follow.

Everything turns to present tense.

Moody sees James and he stops walking, stops taking off his gloves, stops everything. He shakes his head. James does too. He mouths one word.

No.

He runs into his house, ignoring the calls of Moody and the protestations of the other Aurors. He has to see his wife. His beautiful, brave wife.

She's lying in the hallway, an arm bent underneath her face, ribbons of red hair draped across her cheek. He can't see her eyes. He stumbles towards her, tears pricking his eyes and a howl building in his chest. He can't breathe. He falls to his knees beside her and sweeps back her hair with gentle fingers.

Her eyes.

They're open.

He gasps, tears falling thick and hot down his face. He falls back, away from her body but Sirius is there to help him; to hold him.

Hours seem to pass, though it's merely minutes, with James shaking, cries bursting from his chest in hitherto unimaginable, unbearable agony, held awkwardly in Sirius' arms next to the body of his wife. His head is buried into Sirius' shoulder, as Sirius grips the nape of his neck tightly, providing support whilst trying not to fall apart himself. Sirius has never seen James cry like this, not even when he lost his parents, at a time when Sirius had never thought things could be worse.

He won't leave her side.

It's Dumbledore who gets them to move in the end. It's Dumbledore's hand on James' shoulder that takes him away from Lily. He tells Sirius to take James to his flat, and he does so, apparating using Side-Along, because he knows James can't manage it alone. James' knees buckle as his feet hit the linoleum.

Sirius steers his best friend to the lumpy armchair in the corner. James sits now, staring ahead, feeling empty; feeling as though he's been tricked terribly in some way. Everything is beyond his comprehension. His eyes are puffy, red-rimmed and he looks exhausted already. Sirius thinks he's going into shock. He fetches his friend water and a blanket but both remain untouched.

James shakes, his shoulders begin to heave and the tears begin to fall again. Sirius' heart breaks and he rushes forward to his best friend's side, pulling him to his chest. Sirius feels clueless, awkward and anger at the universe is burgeoning in his belly but the compulsion to be there, to help James overrides everything. James says nothing and Sirius doesn't expect him to. He cries until he's retching, and Sirius leaps to fetch him a bucket. He holds it in front of him, watching him be sick, patting his back in a vain attempt at comfort.

Remus bursts in and his heart breaks too.

When James has finished vomiting, Remus takes the bucket from him silently. He glances back to see Sirius murmuring something in James' ear. If James hears, he doesn't show it. His head is lolling and Sirius looks at Remus with concern. And grief.

And neither of them knows what to do. The situation is unprecedented. Beyond imagination, let alone comprehension.

Remus leaves the sick bucket in the sink, and moves to help Sirius support James into a standing position. They move him to the only bedroom, the only bed, and they tuck him in, removing his glasses and placing them next to him. James isn't asleep, his eyes are half-open, but he doesn't seem to have the power to live anymore. It's as if he's gone; hollow. And there is nothing they can promise or hope for to bring him back.

The love of his life is dead.

Murdered.

There is no coming back from that.

Dumbledore visits them a few hours later, but he doesn't speak to James. Peter has come, joining Remus and Sirius as soon as he heard, and Dumbledore addresses them instead. It seems futile to bother James right now, when they aren't even sure he can hear them. They need to let him be.

Dumbledore tells them everything he knows. The house was being watched; the Lestranges were behind it apparently. They saw James and Sirius leave and managed to break the wards around the house. Lily was dead in a matter of seconds. She didn't suffer.

That would be of no comfort to James though, Sirius knew as well as anyone. He was broken. Lost, even. Despondent. Sirius wasn't even sure he would survive through this and he confessed as much to Remus in the early hours of the morning, as they lay awake in the living room. Remus, Peter and Sirius had all since cried for Lily, and their grief was palpable - so real it felt like concrete. But they worried about James, how he would cope with it all, and they knew he would need them all before the end. They needed to be there for him. It was not easy to lose someone you loved, and James loved Lily like no other. His love for her was boundless; unquantifiable. James had never had chance to say goodbye. And he would blame himself for leaving her. For the fact she was alone. That he hadn't said I love you.

* * *

Two weeks pass, and James is still staying with Sirius. Remus has taken to sleeping in the living room on a mattress with him, feeling that they all would benefit from staying together, and Peter pops by when he can.

James has vacated Sirius' room, insisting that he doesn't want to be a burden and that he's better off elsewhere, but he can't bring himself to leave. He can't go home. He's having moments of catatonia; spurts of complete helplessness. His grief is debilitating. He needs the company (the help).

And there's nothing for him at his old house. It's not his home anymore. He knows what's there and it's all emptiness. It's all relics of a life extinguished. His heart aches. He can't pack Lily away into little boxes. She can't exist only in his memory; that's not how their life was supposed to go.

He cries too; Remus can hear him occasionally when James thinks he's asleep. Remus never knows what to do. It feels private and yet his best friend is falling apart next to him. There should be something he can do. James isn't sleeping really and he eats the bare minimum. He's not coping at all, though he's increasingly trying to show that he is. None of them believe him, none of them expected to in the first place, but they say nothing.

They want to.

They want to help him.

* * *

Her funeral happens on the Friday – exactly a month from her murder. It's taken a while, what with investigations and Ministry procedure. James knows it fairly well from his dad's time as an Auror, but familiarity doesn't make this any easier.

Remus shakes him awake at 11, an hour before the ceremony. He hates to do it, knowing that James has barely slept a wink in the three weeks since he lost his wife, but today is important. Today, they say goodbye.

James heads straight for the bathroom and locks himself in. Peter arrives, dressed smartly in a black suit, his face as pale as what Remus imagines his own is. Sirius emerges from his bedroom in an ironed suit, looking neater than ever. Remus has been dressed for a while.

It feels awkward – as if they are all acting different versions of themselves. Nothing feels right without Lily, and without James. Because James isn't here. Not really.

He comes out of the bathroom and it's clear he's trying not to cry today. He wants to look normal; to act normal. He's treating his grief like a secret, but it's the worst kept sort. He says hello, and the lump in his throat is audible. He's pale, with bags under his eyes but he's shaved at least. Remus wants to cry at that; Lily hated James' stubble.

When he's finally dressed, he looks a mess. Peter does up his tie for him as he stands there, looking small and lost like a little boy. It dawns on Remus just how young he is; how young they all are. They seem to have forgotten this fact in light of the war, but they're only 19. Mere babes in the grand scheme of things.

* * *

Lily doesn't have any family, apart from her estranged sister, who, to her credit, does turn up. She glares at James but if he sees, he ignores it. Dorcas Meadowes tries to talk to her, to offer her condolences but Petunia is curt; she mutters something about magic and Potter and a sticky end and James' shoulders sag. Sirius and Remus sit either side of him, and they just about manage to keep him upright during the ceremony. _Just about_. They all make a speech and Dumbledore steps in when James' breaks down. They steer him away from the lectern and the congregation pretends they can't hear his breathless sobs.

No one can seem to say anything.

Later on, back at Sirius' flat, Remus manages to slip James a dreamless sleep potion, and finally, he rests. They talk, laughing a little about Lily and her snorty laugh, and the way she used to rant at James, and tease him endlessly. They miss her deeply, of course they do. It burns in their heart constantly. They can't bring themselves to imagine how James must feel.

* * *

James does not feel. He takes to drinking heavily to avoid it. It starts with one glass and then gets slowly worse, until he's drinking half a bottle at night just to get to sleep. The three of them lose count of how many times they pick him up off the floor, or how many times they have to rub his back as he cradles the toilet vomiting. He's careless, spiralling out of control and still, no one knows what to say. It's becoming a habit, their silence and they all know they need to break it. James needs them to break it.

Dorcas visits, as do the Longbottoms, but no one stays for long. They shoot James pitying looks as he tries to drown himself in cups of tea and firewhiskey. No one can stand the sight of such brutal grief for long.

* * *

He has a fight with Sirius some weeks later and moves out. It's a manifestation of the Sirius' worry and his constant feeling of helplessness; he's always been adrift without his best friend. Sirius tries to tell him, tries to help him, shouting at James, something about respect and the proper way to remember Lily. But James doesn't want to _remember_ Lily. He wants to experience her; feel her; touch her; talk to her. He can't accept that she's not here, she hasn't been for a long time and all the feeling of loss and pain culminates in a terrible fury that eclipses it all. In the end, James smashes a glass and storms out.

When he doesn't return, Remus and Peter go to look for him, leaving a pallid, fretting Sirius at home just in case James comes back before they find him. Sirius looks defeated and Remus squeezes his shoulder as he makes to leave. It's not his fault. This was never going to be easy, after all.

They find James stood, stooped, outside his house at midnight, staring at the broken gate and closed door. He's not crying; he's just there, watching as nothing happens, as his house remains still, unlived in. Their breath clouds in the cold and Remus places a gloved hand on James' shoulder. For the first time in an age, James seems to respond. He's waking up at last.

They take him back to Sirius' that night but he moves out the next day to a small flat in Diagon Alley. They make promises to visit.

* * *

Things start to look up – just a little bit. Though he still can't believe he wakes up daily to a world without Lily Potter, James starts to appreciate small things - like waking up daily at all.

* * *

He hosts a dinner party, six months to the day that Lily died. Most of the Order attends and they all know the date, and that James knows it too. He's finally cleaned out his old house and boxed Lily's stuff. Six cardboard boxes sit in a corner of his flat but he doesn't know what to do with them yet, and the party goes on around them. He's trying to be okay and that's something. People start to talk to him properly again, without pitying looks and uncomfortable silences.

He smiles fully for the first time since he lost Lily, but he cries harder than ever at the end. He gets a little too drunk and Alice Longbottom says something too nice and Sirius has to pull him aside. He cries hard about how much he misses her, and all three Marauders stay over that night to keep him company. They all know how much he loved her.

* * *

Six months later, a year to the day that he returned home to find his wife dead, James Potter is ambushed by Death Eaters. He's setting flowers on the doorstep of his house, and he's shaven, and well-rested for once. He hasn't drank in weeks, he's slept through nights without help and he's actually been able to help the Order, a feat he had lost faith in after his wife's murder. Of course, he still misses her greatly but there's a chance he might make it. Small, but entirely existent.

Alas, fate has other ideas. He's outnumbered six to one, as the masked figures descend upon him. He tries to fight back but he's out of practice – and perhaps his heart isn't really in it after all. Living has always been that much harder without Lily. At ten to midnight, a green streak of light hits James Potter directly in his chest and he thuds to the ground dead. He's found by Sirius minutes later and he doesn't hear the desperate tone of his best friend's voice as he calls his name. He doesn't feel Sirius shake his body by the lapels of his jacket and he doesn't feel the tears hit his neck. He doesn't feel anything ever again.

They bury him next to Lily.

* * *

When James went to fetch chips, he didn't know what lurked round the corner. He couldn't know what fate was waiting to befall him. Within a year, the Potter family was wiped out completely – destroyed by nothing but old-fashioned evil.

Even in death, however, the Potters would affect people; change them. Timelines changed and outcomes altered. No one finds out about Peter until it's too late, and he's the only Marauder left. And no one finds out about Snape and how he pleaded with the Death Eaters to not torture Lily – how it was him that granted her the clean death. He remains with the Death Eaters, bitterly drinking to the demise of his rivals and toasting a woman he barely even knew towards the end.

And little Neville Longbottom grows up without parents, raised by his grandmother in a small town in the north of England. Whatever his story may turn out to be, it was changed the day James Potter went to fetch chips. It changed the day Lily Potter died; the day her destiny and the destiny of her husband changed irrevocably. The day before Harry Potter, their son, was conceived.


End file.
